1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to managing the delivery of advertising impressions on devices that are intermittently-connected to a network. More specifically, the present invention relates to planning an advertising campaign of advertisements, managing delivery of advertisement content associated with the advertisement to one or more receiver modules, and managing the selection of the advertisement, and associated advertising content, for display to a viewer.
2. The Relevant Technology
For many years, homes, offices, and other buildings have accessed broadcast programming through airwave broadcasts, cable providers, satellite transmission, and other communication channels. Televisions provide viewers with a varied assortment of entertainment, news, advertisements, and educational programming. From the first broadcasts to current television programming, viewers gather a wealth of knowledge while being entertained. With advances in communication technology and computer systems in recent years, viewers of broadcast programming no longer are limited to merely watching a television screen, but can utilize personal computers, or the like. Further, instead of merely watching the broadcast programming, viewers may participate in enhanced programming experiences through use of a set-top box or other similar device.
An advertiser desires to maximize revenue by enticing a viewer to purchase the product or services displayed in its advertisement. Hence, advertisers are willing to provide desirable consideration to those able to display their video advertisements to target viewers that are more likely to purchase the advertiser's products or services. While such advertising may sometimes seem bothersome to viewers, the presence of advertising often reduces the cost of viewers receiving broadcast programming. For example, many television channels are free, since revenue from advertising alone is sufficient incentive to provide the television channels. On the other hand, some premium channels present no advertisements, but instead achieve adequate incentives for providing the channel by charging the viewers a periodic fee.
The ability to target advertisements, such as video advertisements, audio advertisements, banner advertisements, static advertisements, combinations thereof, or the like, is of great value to advertisers. Targeting occurs by characterizing the segment of the population that is the most likely consumer of the product or service. Markets may be segmented by a myriad of characteristics such as gender, age, income, occupation, education level, special hobbies, geography, demographics, and so forth. By communicating the advertisement using those media that are more likely to be seen by the target market segment or target viewer, advertising is made more efficient.
For example, suppose a software developer manufactures a video game that tends to be attractive to men between 16 and 25 years old. In order to target the advertisement to the most likely consumer, the software developer may place a video advertisement on a television channel that tends to have male viewers between the ages of 16 and 25. By targeting in this manner, advertisers increase the chance of revenue on a per viewer basis. In addition, viewers tend to find the advertising more relevant. Thus, advertisers and viewers both may benefit by targeted advertising.
Further, advertisers typically want to deliver a precise number of impressions of the targeted advertisement, without over-delivering or under-delivering the advertisement. For instance, an advertiser may wish 5,000,000 people between the ages of 16 and 25 to watch that advertiser's advertisement at a specific time. Therefore, the advertiser wishes for 5,000,000 “impressions” of the advertisement to be displayed to the targeted market segment.
To facilitate the needs of these advertisers and maximize advertising revenue, broadcasters, as well as cable and satellite operators, want to avoid underutilization of available inventory, i.e., the expected number of advertising impression opportunities that can be reserved for advertisements, and hence want to ensure that 100% of the available inventory for the advertisement is sold. Although the broadcasters wish to maximize use of the advertising inventory, the broadcaster also attempts to avoid over-committing or over-subscribing the available inventory.
Further, broadcasters often want to manage two very different types of advertisements or advertising campaigns. The broadcaster manages high priced advertisements that the broadcaster commits to display in specific markets at specific times and at in specific locations, known as committed advertisements. The broadcaster allocates or schedules specific amounts of available advertising inventory for these specific advertisements or advertising campaigns. To fill in the remaining amount of available advertising inventory, the broadcaster manages low-priced advertisements or house advertisements, termed filler or flexible advertisements, which are to be displayed when advertising inventory is available and no committed advertisements are scheduled for such advertising inventory. The broadcaster attempts to avoid over-committing or over-subscribing committed advertisements for the available inventory, while avoiding under-committing or under-subscribing committed advertisements for the available advertising inventory.
In the conventional television environment, a broadcaster has a defined number of times for a specific period between breaks of broadcast programming. The broadcaster can only “sell” one time to one advertiser. Consequently, the advertiser can specify a number of timeslots that the advertiser's advertisement is to be displayed. Viewership within these timeslots is measured by standard TV Ratings data, which is then used to estimate a specific impression count. Broadcasters use these estimates to determine whether they over or undersold their advertisement inventory. Advertisers use this information to ensure that the number of impressions desired was met or exceeded.
The same goals of advertisers and broadcasters arise for delivering targeted advertisement via the Internet. Various other systems and methods have been developed to enable the advertiser and broadcasters to meet the above-referenced goals. For example, some systems utilize a centralized ad-server that delivers advertisement upon request from an application or web page at the moment that an ad is needed, makes a real-time decision of which ad to deliver, and tracks the delivery of advertising impressions. This decision is based upon the number of impressions requested by the advertiser, the number of impressions already delivered, the time remaining for the advertising campaign, and the targeting criteria of the advertisement.
New technology is permitting broadcasters to move away from the traditional limitations of delivering only a single advertisement to all households within a single timeslot. For example, new targeted advertising technologies allow broadcasters to deliver different advertisements to different households within a single timeslot, based on interest, location or demographics. Further, even the notion of a fixed timeslot is becoming obsolete. For example, new advertising opportunities arise when viewers use a broadcaster's Electronic Program Guide—which is accessed ‘on demand’ rather than during defined timeslots. Unfortunately, with these new types of advertising campaigns, delivering a requested number of impressions for a specific advertiser becomes more problematic. There a lack of commercially-available TV Ratings data to determine the number of households matching a particular interest, location or demographic target viewing during a specific timeslot, so targeted advertising inventory becomes difficult to calculate. Similarly, TV ratings cannot reveal the quantity of advertising inventory available from visits to the Electronic Program Guide or other on-demand media on the TV. Technologies that have been deployed for Internet advertisement delivery are better suited for these new types of TV-based advertisements, but these technologies typically require a persistent 2-way online connection, while Satellite, Cable and other broadcasters are often at best only intermittently connected to their customers' set-top boxes for 2-way communication.